


living in the aftermath

by unicyclehippo



Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [49]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, everyone say you love beau challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25682266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: prompt: a found family comfort fic for Beauor,Each of the Mighty Nein has something they can offer, a way to help Beau. After talking to her father, she just might need all of it.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & The Mighty Nein, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [49]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824289
Comments: 8
Kudos: 160





	living in the aftermath

Caleb

//

The woman who walks out of that house is not his Beauregard. If not for his familiarity with transmutation, he might suspect that someone else had been put in her place; the imposter has copied her flawlessly—wears her face, her skin, her scars—but she does not know how to be their Beauregard.

Their Beauregard has eyes like needles, sharp and shining, that pin people open to examine their insides, cobalt eyes. These eyes—blank eyes, clouded-over eyes—are wrong.

Their Beauregard moves like a cat. Not like Frumpkin, whose form sometimes shifts and moves to fit the world—he is real and unreal and his smoking steps reflect it. Beauregard moves like one of the great striped cats, the kings of the southern forests; Caleb had seen one, once, in his days at the Academy and it is the only way he knows how to conceptualise of Beauregard’s distinctive physicality. She is forceful and graceful all at once; she slinks and steps and climbs with power in her movements. There is a confidence to her that is all physical—all of her power, all of her presence, contained. Concrete. The imposter cannot begin to understand this. Her hands are wrong. They hang heavy at her sides like an inept simulacrum, like gloves filled with some unsuitable material— with ice, with lead. They lurch in pendulum swings from the shoulders, out of time. She does not stride or strut. She stumbles over a hunk of raised rock. When she braces against Caleb, who steps quickly to her side, her fingers claw at the proffered arm so she doesn’t meet mud.

Her skin is cold and wet from the misting downpour.

_Enough_ , Caleb thinks. Tugs her to stop, halt.

She doesn’t argue with him and it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Blue eyes drift to his face, unseeing, glazed. He sees the faintest stir behind them of recognition and she looks down to their joined hands.

‘Your hands are cold,’ he says softly.

There is no hiding that they have stopped from the watchful others, but he doesn’t have to let them hear. Beau is a private person and they have learned more of her history in the last two days, last hour, than ever; he will not let anyone take more from her, not even the knowledge that her hands are cold.

‘No,’ she denies. ‘’m all— _hot_.’ Rubs her other hand over the back of her neck as she has been doing all day. The skin is red, raw with scratching, but from what he can see it is hot from friction alone.

He makes a sound of disagreement. Pulls his gloves from the pocket of his coat and works the first onto the hand he still holds. It is hard because she is not being helpful, like pulling a glove onto a statue, but finally it is more or less on and he rubs the hand between both of his own in that rough way that calls heat back into extremities.

She shivers. Blinks, surprised by the way another shiver shakes through her.

He coaxes her second hand into the other glove. ‘There. Wunderbar.’

Beau curls her fingers into fists, slightly cushioned by the gloves that are only a little threadbare. ‘You don’t need ‘em?’ she asks, the thought making her reach off and fiddle with the cuffs.

Caleb lays his hands over hers. Squeezes. ‘Nein, it is fine. I can summon flames, remember?' Beau is still trying to work them off clumsily; he squeezes her hands again and they still. 'Keep them.’

He cannot help but wonder—as she struggles past the exhaustion to think, to figure if he needs them more, eyes narrowing into an approximation of shrewd, prying—how many things Beau has been given. A slap across the face, is the first he knows of. A jade necklace with no apparent real defences, supposedly to keep her safe. Anything else? Fire boils in his belly, threatens to burn through his veins, his entire self—threatens to send the rain that hits him steaming, hissing away from his too-warm skin—as her tear-stained cheeks crinkle into a very small smile.

‘Thanks, Caleb.’

He lets his hand settle on her shoulder when they set out again, fond, letting her feel the weight of his presence at her side.

* * *

Nott

//

She waits until they’ve purchased beds for the night in the inn, waits until Beau and Jester have gone upstairs to their room, before she follows. Waits until Beau has excused herself, stepped into the washroom, before letting herself in and setting the little jade rabbit on Beau’s bedside.

‘You steal that?’

Nott shrieks and spins, crossbow drawn. Beau doesn’t even flinch; her eyes are focused on the statuette, over Nott’s shoulder.

‘Beau! Steal? Little old me?’ she hedges awkwardly until she realises she isn’t seeing upset on Beau’s face, or annoyance. Strange, given that it is Beau’s go-to expression, but… ‘Ah—yes. I didn’t like the way he spoke to you, so,’ Nott flutters her fingers in a _There you go_ sort of motion. Her eyes narrow, gleaming with interest at the way Beau’s expression shifts.

‘He’s—complicated,’ she says finally.

Nott isn’t sure if what she has, what this goblin body has, are hackles, but if they were they’d be raised by Beau’s tone: quiet, borderline defeated. Worse—understanding.

‘He’s an asshole.’

Beau smiles crookedly. ‘So was I. So am I.’

‘You were a _kid_ ,’ Nott snarls. Holds her hands up in surrender when Beau’s eyes snap sideways, staring at her finally instead of that damn statuette. ‘Sorry, sorry, not my place, sorry.’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘Right. Well.’ Nott whistles faintly through her crooked teeth.

‘I nearly broke that,’ Beau tells her, eyes sliding back to the statue. ‘When I was - I dunno. Ten? Ten, I think. I was running in the house and slipped. Slammed into the table,’ she says, and doesn’t seem to notice the way her hand lifts to rub at the long-healed scar above her eyebrow. ‘It fell off. Hit the carpet. There’s - ah - a little chip missing on the back,’ she tells Nott, who doesn’t bother checking. The corner of Beau’s lips twitch up into an expression Nott wouldn’t in a hundred years call a smile. ‘He picked that up first.’

‘Beau…’ The girl sighs. Nott puts her crossbow away. She hadn’t realised it was still out, the weight so comforting in her hands. Now they’re empty, they itch with the need to take something, work with something. She threads her long, bad fingers together. ‘Thank you for coming here. I know you did it for me and—thank you.’

Beau jerks her head in a nod. Nott has nothing more to say, knows it isn’t the right time to mention how much she thinks Beau’s dad is a dickhead, knows very little of what she says will be taken seriously by Beau. So instead, she says to her friend,

‘It sounded cool. Your plan for the wine. I’m sorry he didn’t listen to you.’ Nott eases forward, toward Beau standing interposed between the bed and the door. She stops beside her, pats the girl fondly on the hip. Leaves her hand there as she looks up into Beau’s suddenly blank face. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re with us.’

‘Okay,’ Beau rasps, not meeting her eyes.

Nott pats her side again. ‘Sleep well. You need your rest if we’re off to fuck up a hag in the morning.’

* * *

Fjord and Yasha

//

‘At least we know now,’ he says low to Yasha as they follow Beau out from the inn. ‘If we ever want her to be less sneaky, just…’

‘Confront her with her past?’

‘Yeah.’ Fjord grimaces. ‘Not really funny, huh?’

Yasha eyes the slow figure ahead of them, her meandering path. She would think Beau were drunk, if she hadn’t been watching her carefully since they left that place. A half cup of wine would have no effect like this on the well-practised monk.

‘No.’

The pair follow Beau through the mud-slopped streets. For a short while, she stands at the base of the switch-back roads up to the Rainbow Vineyards and Yasha is prepared to return to the inn and fetch everyone, in case Beau has it in her mind to revisit the house—what they would do, she isn’t sure. Stop her? Perhaps. Help her? Definitely. But Beau doesn’t head up; she turns away and wanders back up the path. Fjord and Yasha step aside to get out of her way and she walks right past them, unseeing.

‘Still raining,’ Fjord says to Yasha.

Her chest tightens around mixed pain and love. For Beau, who is hurting. And for Fjord, who will muster a bad lie to protect his best friend.

‘Ah. Yes,’ she agrees, lying too. ‘I think I feel it.’ She holds her hand out, palm up to the sky. Wipes the imaginary droplets off against her cloak.

They follow Beau to the other end of the town, to the southern gates. She walks out of them, staggers to a stop by a low cliff where she sits. Throws her legs over the edge and grasps at small rocks, tosses them down the embankment into the burning pools there.

Fjord sits to one side of her.

Yasha sits on the other.

Neither of them speak, until eventually Beau swears. Scrubs at her cheeks.

‘Fuck—when—hey guys,’ she says, voice thick. She reworks it into something sharper. ‘Are you following me?’

Yasha looks to Fjord over her head, nervous. Perhaps she shouldn’t be here, she has caused enough hurt,

‘A-yup,’ Fjord tells Beau, a hint of his old swaggering accent in the word.

‘How long?’

‘Good long while.’

Beau stares at him, mouth working but no sound coming out. She jerks her head to Yasha, who smiles. Jerks her head to the pools, which burble and burn away.

‘Didn’t notice.’

‘No, we know.’ Fjord leans heavy against her shoulder. ‘It’s alright.’

‘Should’ve noticed.’

‘You don’t have to be —‘ Yasha hesitates, suddenly nervous under the way Beau looks at her. Like a piece of flint waiting to spark. Like a woman who is hurting. ‘We wanted to…make sure you are safe. We didn’t…wish to intrude.’

‘Did you at least hide?’

‘Nope.’ Fjord pops the sound of the _p_ with relish. ‘You walked right past us.’ Holds a hand up to his face, exaggerating—though not by much—how close they had been and Beau had not seen them.

‘Fuck.’

The word punches out of her along with the last of her energy. Yasha catches her as she sags, leans her fully against Fjord who wraps an arm around her shoulders.

‘He’s a cute fuckin’ kid, huh?’ she mumbles.

‘Sure is. Looks like you.’

‘I was a little monster.’ Beau knocks her head on his shoulder. Drops a hand to the side, her fingers hooking onto Yasha’s bracer.

‘Naw,’ Fjord says, so so softly. He turns his head, drops a kiss onto her crown. ‘I reckon you were just fine.’

They sit with her as her facade breaks again; she has no energy to maintain it and it breaks with a coughing sob. The facade was all she had and there's precious little left in her to cry out so when she's done, when she’s empty of tears, she's left with next to nothing. Drained, Beau crumples in on herself. Bit by bit, she slips from this state into unconsciousness.

‘Yasha? Little help?’ Fjord asks, holding Beau awkwardly back from the edge of the low cliff.

Yasha stands. Scoops the smaller woman into her arms. Adjusts her with Fjord’s help so her head leans peacefully on Yasha’s shoulder, Fjord’s cloak a cushion. They head back to the inn, Beau lulled by the rolling step, cradled safely in her friend’s arms.

The inn is dark, the stairways barely lit by lantern light. Yasha carries her up the stairs—laughs softly at Fjord’s low whistle.

‘You’re not tired at _all_? You carried her all the way across town—I mean, I know she’s small but she’s not exactly light!’

‘She’s fine,’ Yasha shrugs. Her muscles are warm from exertion but it isn’t something that strains or hurts. ‘Would you… The door?’

‘Huh? Oh, sure, yes.’

He cracks the bedroom door for her. They creep in, not wanting to wake Jester. Jester, who sleeps turned toward Beau’s bed, who looks as though she had drifted off in the middle of staring at the empty sheets.

Yasha holds Beau as Fjord pulls down the sheets; lowering her onto the mattress, she takes a minute to settle Beau comfortably before she moves down to help Fjord work at the laces of muddied boots. Easing them off, Fjord takes them, holds them in his hand. He watches Yasha’s hands carefully—not from any suspicion but from a deep, worried care—as she draws the blanket up to around Beau’s shoulders.

‘Sleep well, Beau,’ Fjord says with all the reverence of a prayer.

Yasha wonders if he is aware of the faint green glow around his free hand as he rests it on Beau’s shoulder. The frown that grips Beau’s brows tight loosens a fraction. Eases.

* * *

Caduceus

//

Caduceus trusts Fjord and Yasha to track her down in the night.

His job is not like theirs. Their duty is to protect her, to keep her from going too far, to bring her home. His job is — he’s reluctant to say harder, he has no doubt there was some careful work to bringing her home, but it is one thing to catch the wild horse and another to tame it. So he assumes. He’s never tamed a horse himself, nor does the analogy sit well with regards to Beauregard. Except, that is, a wild horse is skittish to the reaching hand and he cannot stop thinking about a younger Beauregard, already young, who has been struck by her father. Caduceus doesn’t consider himself an educated man but there are some things he knows to the core of himself, and this is one of those things: Beauregard has been starved of those necessary things, like the withered and pitiful garden within the estate. If she is not healthy, if she does not bloom as brightly and as prettily as expected, it is not the plants fault but the gardeners.

That is to say, he thinks, she deserves more. Better.

Which brings him to his duty. He rolls a mouthful of floral tea over his tongue and lifts his gaze from enjoying the handsome grain work in the simple table to the stairs, where a barefooted girl, hair half-fallen from its topknot, hurries down.

‘Good morning, Beau.’

She looks marginally better. Reflexes far improved from the night before. He had been tempted to check for signs of undeath, with her moving like the animated dead, skin as cold.

‘Cad,’ she grunts.

The skin beneath her eyes is puffy and dark, from crying and from a lack of sleep. He had heard Fjord and Yasha return late last night, perhaps even early into morning, so she can’t have slept for more than—three? Four hours at most.

‘You haven’t slept enough.’

She grunts. ‘Seen my boots?’

‘Yes.’ He drinks from his cup. Flares his nostrils to take in the scent as the movement stirs, hits the notes of the drop of honey he had added. After last night, he needs the boost, the sweetness.

‘Where?’

Cad just smiles, no intent whatsoever to say. ‘Tea?’ He has rarely seen anyone who needs a cup more than she does now; she desperately needs it, needs a moment to relax from holding herself so tense, gingerly, like she has been turned inside out and back again and she’s scared it’ll happen again.

Beau doesn’t seem to agree. Squints at him, a not unfamiliar squint, the one she gets when she’s reading books in unfamiliar script. Like she is figuring him out. Lips pressed flat, not quite a scowl.

Caduceus thinks about telling her that he isn’t a book, can’t be read like one, when her frown clears and she nods.

‘Fjord’s got ‘em. Great. Thanks.’

‘What?’

Beau salutes. Backs up the stairs.

‘How did you—‘ he begins to ask, brows crawling higher in his forehead like fat, confused pink caterpillars, but she has already disappeared, taking the steps two at a time.

He listens as the door to the room he was sharing with Fjord creaks open. A moment, and then it creaks again, closing. The loose floorboard at the top of the steps squeals, tattletale to Beau's return. She joins Caduceus with boots in hand, and takes a seat at the table with him turned in the seat so she can pull the boots on. Wipes a rough palm over the sole of her foot, brushing off dust and dirt. She braces her heel on the seat of the chair and tugs the laces tight into proper, secure ladders all the way up.

‘He polished them,’ Beau grunts and switches feet. Shakes her head. ‘Sap.’

‘He cares for you.’

There—a small shift, like a contraption winched tight, Beau’s shoulders creaking closer together, tighter, tense.

‘He just hates mess. You seen the way he is at the Xhorhaus? Washes his room out. Scrubs the kitchen top to bottom.’

‘Mm.’

‘You must like that.’

Caduceus taps a finger against the material of his cup. This inn has a very fine ceramic. It's very nice, very light and warm. And the pattern they've painted over it is very pretty. ‘He reorganises the cupboards,’ Cad tells her, watches with a little pride as the comment surprises a smile out of her.

‘Caduceus,’ she says, teases, ‘is that a _complaint_?’

‘Everyone has flaws. Neatness isn’t too bad of one.’

Boots on, obviously feeling a little more put together, more herself, Beau leans back in her chair. She slings an arm over the back of it, all apparent ease. Her smile is crooked, a half-summoned thing. ‘Yeah, he’s alright,’ she allows.

‘He’s marvellous.’ There—an easy shift into what he needs to talk to her about. ‘As are you.’

She rolls her eyes hard.

‘We’re all looking after you in our own ways.’

‘Found a way to help me, have you? Am I easy like the rest of them?’

‘No. I don’t think you have ever been easy.’ He watches her flinch truly this time and hums, realises his misstep. ‘That—was not meant to be an insult.’

‘’s fine, dude. Whatever. You’re not wrong.’

Caduceus’s duty is care; his duty is helping people to move on, to grieve and leave their grief, to transfer it into something that can be borne more easily. It was easier when he had no interest in the grief himself, but he loves this woman and somehow it has made him clumsy.

‘There are great works that are done,’ Caduceus says to her. ‘Art and other acts of creation, great gardens. They aren’t easy.’ Beau frowns. ‘But they are marvellous.’

Beau clicks her tongue, shakes her head. She isn’t ready to talk, or hear more of the regard he has for her, that they all have for her, so he stops.

‘Tea?’

Beau sighs. ‘Sure. Why not.’

He smiles as warmly as he can manage. ‘I have two options.’ He pulls them from his pack, smells them to make sure. Sets them before her. ‘This one,’ he shows her, puts it to one side, ‘will clear your mind. Help wake you up. And this,’ he sets it to the other side and if it is much closer to her, well, it isn’t as though he is trying to be subtle, ‘will help you go back to sleep.’

‘I don’t think—I’m not going back to sleep, dude.’

She doesn’t push the offering away. Stares down at it with tired, tired eyes.

He waits. Won’t make this decision for her. Figures, from what he can gather, she’s had enough of people trying to make decisions for a whole lifetime.

‘Would—will you make me a cup of this?’ she asks, quietly, looking a little shameful as she points to the clear-head tea. ‘I’m sorry—I know you think I should—but I can’t. Not right now.’

He hums. ‘Perhaps tonight. You’ll sleep very well after it,’ he offers. Is rewarded with a look of relief, of thanks.

‘Sounds good. Yeah.’ Then, after a moment, ‘’preciate it, man.’

He keeps to that promise. Drinks a pot of tea with her that morning that, he thinks, has a lot to do with the good decisions they make that morning. Tea helps with that. Sitting quietly with a friend helps with that. And that evening, after a very very long day, he finds her before she can offer to take first watch and sits her at the end of his bedroll and sets up his tea station right there. Pours enough of the leaves into the water to make a single cup. He takes care to prepare it the way he always does, when he has the time. It isn’t prayer, isn’t a ritual of the kind he makes to worship the Mother, but a ritual of another kind, as old and as profound in some ways. The ritual of care, of providing, of effort. The ritual of making something especially for the one person who will appreciate it. The person who will need it the most. Not the exclusion of others, but attention to one person alone. His parents had made sure to do that for them. His parents had done the same for all of them, took the time to speak to them alone, encourage their interests; it was easy to get lost in a herd of children. It occurs to Caduceus that he might have lost himself into family even with none of them around him. He shakes the thought away. Touches his palm to the kettle. Perfect.

‘Here,’ he says, words buzzing like beetles in his chest. It always feels a little foreign, a little strange, to speak. He hadn’t spoken for a long, long time before his friends had collected him from the Grove and sometimes the words are hard. The gestures—the making, the healing—are harder for people to misconstrue. He picks up the cup by the brim, sets it in her cupped palms.

Sits beside her as she sips.

‘It's been a long day.’ Beau grimaces. The tea is bitter, but that isn’t why she grimaces. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assures. ‘Jester will forgive you.’

‘She wants me to—slow down. Relax. I can’t relax, Cad, even on a good fucking day.’

‘Hmm.’

Beau snorts. ‘Helpful.’

She drinks a little more.

The air is clean and clear within the dome, pleasant after the hours of walking in this strange place that smells so heavily of metals and gases. Caleb tells them all that it is minerals and sulphur, the waters like pools of acid from the chemicals. To Caduceus, it is as if the earth itself here is dying and decomposing, petrifying even as she bloats. It’s strange and as fascinating as it is upsetting, and from moment to moment Caduceus shifts on whether this is natural or not.

Beau sits there on his bedroll and there she stays, cup beginning to tip out of numb fingers, head lolling.

‘Oop,’ Caduceus says, reaches over to catch Beau at the small of her back, spread his hand wide there as she sags and drops into sleep like a fish tossed onto land—that is, surprising to the fish, who struggles briefly, eyes wide, before landing with the dull sound of flesh on stone. ‘Whoops.’

‘Gods, Cad, what the hell—did you brain her?’ Fjord asks, alerting Caleb too, who looks up from his place in the centre of the dome where he has chosen to read.

‘No, no, she’ll be just fine. Sleep through the night, hopefully.’

Fjord grunts. Looks fondly at Beau. Then laughs. ‘She’s already snoring. Dibs on the other side of the dome.’

Caleb looks amused, obediently shifts his things from where Fjord points. He looks tired too, Caduceus notes and briefly regrets that he had only made the one cup. And that he had done so in front of Caleb. He’ll never get the wizard to drink this brew now.

* * *

Jester

//

It is a long day punctuated by the strange, sudden greys that colour the flora here—flowers and vines and trees shrivelled and withered and turned to living stone, the thrum of life present but dulled to the point where Caduceus is hard put to feel it. Jester leaves him to tend to the plants and figure them out. She doesn’t know an awful lot about plants and her time is better spent, she figures, at Beau’s side.

They’re miles from the Lionett estate and everyone within it but still Beau walks like she’s expecting an attack at any moment, snaps at useless discussion, and walks too fast for any of them to keep up until Jester snags her. Holds her hand hard enough that the girl can’t shrug her off. It makes Beau more restless, Jester can see that, the way she’s straining to get ahead, to get to whatever awaits them, to figure this out and find answers _finally_ , and Jester understands, really, she does!

‘It’s just that it’s dangerous if we can’t keep up with you, Beau, and what if you get into some kind of trouble and we’re too far to hear you, or don’t pick the same path, or just can’t get there in time?’

‘I can look after myself, Jes,’

‘Obviously, obviously,’ Jester agrees hurriedly. ‘You’re really strong and smart, Beau, we know that, but you don’t have to look out for yourself when you have all of us, and—‘ Jester hesitates, not sure Beau can take hearing about how very, very tired she looks.

‘I am feeling very tired, myself,’ Caleb says, not to Beau because the others are all pretending not to see the way Jester has more or less grappled Beau into standing still for just a second so she can talk her into making camp and staying with them. Jester shoots him a glare; she knows he can lie more convincingly than that, and they are supposed to be convincing Beau. But he must know some way of talking to her to get her attention because Jester feels the lightning thrum of tension running through Beau’s cord-tight muscles fade the smallest bit. Feels shoulders drop an inch. Hears her reluctant scoff, almost a laugh.

‘Fine. _Fine_.’ Beau brings her hand up finally to return the hug—grapple—and pat Jester’s back. ‘You can let me go now, I’m not gonna bolt,’ she tells Jester, who wishes very much she could see Beau’s face and what that amount of fondness would look like. Hearing it is enough—sweet like caramel, warm and featherlight like smoke around her.

Jester pulls back slowly. Affects a suspicious squint and doesn’t let go. Not just yet. ‘Promise?’ she teases.

It’s doubly sweet to see how reluctantly the smile comes, how Beau has to rearrange her whole face to accommodate it.

‘Promise.’

Jester squeezes her. Releases her, hugging hands gliding down to Beau’s, squeezing those too. She leaves a trail of healing behind her, because Beau’s dad might have said run from the things in the woods but Beau had decided not to.

Beau hooks her pinkie around Jester’s. Holds it for a moment, says again—‘Promise’—before she begins to pace the campsite, bothering Fjord and distracting Caleb who just wants to set up the dome. He sends raven-Frumpkin to busy Beau, leads her on a chase around the clearing and up to the branches of a nearly spruce—the low branches, when Caleb sees the way Jester glares at him.

‘Hey Caleb. Caleb.’

‘Ja, Beaure—Beau.’

‘Ha! Beau-Beau,’ Nott repeats. ‘Cute.’

‘Call me that again and I’ll happily help with the first part of your resurrection,’ Beau promises. Nott hisses in through her teeth; after a moment, Beau clears her throat. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, no, say how you really feel.’

‘I said I’m sorry!’

‘Alright, I think everyone could do with a minute apart. Beau—‘ Cad says, bends over her, hand on her shoulder. ‘You promised I could make you tea.’

Jester can see the way she wants to snap at him too, send him away. Sees the moment Beau gives in and lets Cad lead her to his bedroll on the edge of the dome, talk quietly with him as he brews a bitter smelling tea that makes Jester’s nose itch when she passes by later. She misses the exact moment when Beau passes out but turns when she hears her crumple, cries out when she sees Beau sprawled there and hurries back into the dome.

‘Caduceus!’

‘She’s fine,’ he tells her. Fjord nods like he’s just asked the exact same thing. ‘She’s fine, just sleeping.’

‘You knocked her out?’

A hint of nerves crawls over Caduceus’s face. ‘I—helped her sleep.’

‘Ooh, she’s going to be so mad when she wakes up,’ Jester whispers, not sure if she should be mad on Beau’s behalf or relieved.

‘Ah.’ Caduceus scratches at his hair, the point where one lock of hair is turning white. ‘Well.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.’

‘Aw, I really appreciate that. Thank you, Jester.’

Jester pats his arm. Moves Caleb’s things—who clicks his tongue and sighs—so she can lay out hers next to Cad’s bed, taken over by the fully snoring Beau.

Curled up beside her, Jester smells the faint scent of Cad’s sleeping mat—sweat and earth and growing things like sweet grass, and the bitter tang of crushed beetles. And below it, shuffling closer, she smells what she knows now is the smell of Kamordah, though she knew it first as Beau—the tang of metal and the bite of something ever so faintly sour, even as it balances against the flowery smell of jasmine. She wonders as she drifts off whether it is something that sunk into Beau and refused to shift, or if the other girl just happened to gravitate toward soaps that smelled similar. She’ll have to ask.

//

Beau wakes late, when the fire has burned down to embers and the last watch—Yasha and Nott—have slunk off to patrol just beyond the treeline. Jester wakes to the sensation of gentle, careful fingers on her tail, unwrapping it from where it is snuggly curled around Beau’s ankle. Beau’s pant leg had lifted an inch or two, bunching higher around her calf, and Jester’s tail had taken advantage, seeking out the warmth of the human’s skin and double wrapping there where the cloth has moved to reveal skin.

‘Jes, geez,’ Beau mutters to herself, struggling to get free. ‘Help a girl out,’ she hisses though not loud enough to wake Jester, not if she hadn't been already well on her way to waking. With a sigh, and a grumble, Beau tickles Jester’s tail with blunt nails, enough to make the muscles twitch and jump and slacken. Quicker than anything else, Beau slips her foot free with a quiet sound of victory.

She staggers to her feet, hand going to her head, smacks dry lips. ‘ _God_ , Caduceus, what was in that fucking tea,’ she mutters, picking her way over curled sleeping forms.

Jester eases up onto her elbows; most of her believes Beau isn’t silly enough to make a break for it—she has left everything, including her goggles. A small part of Jester that has zero sense and only concerns itself with keeping her friend right at her side where she can see her and soothe her and protect her worries pushes her to sit upright.

Across the dome, Jester sees Caleb rouse as Beau crosses the threshold of the hut.

‘Is she -'

‘I think she’s going to pee,’ Jester whispers. Brings his eyes suddenly to Jester, searching in the dark. He settles on what he thinks is Jester—pretty close for being in near complete dark, the canopy thick overhead—and nods slowly.

‘I can’t leave,’ he tells her. ‘The hut will drop.’

Jester stands. Pats his shoulder as she passes to follow Beau out. She waits just beyond the boundary of the hut, seeing how Beau has only gone a short way from them, and waves a little when Beau returns, picking her careful path across the stone-and-grass clearing.

Beau’s steps falter and then pick up. When she gets closer, Jester can see a crooked, easy smile on her face and silently thanks Caduceus for knocking Beau out.

‘I’m fine,’ Beau insists when she’s close enough to be heard. ‘You— Everyone doesn’t have to worry about me.’

Jester tilts her head up to return the smile, twice as sweet. ‘I’d like to see you try and stop us.’

Beau looks away with a shake of her head. Snorts.

‘Sleeping okay?’

‘Yeah. Whatever Cad gave me was a helluva knock out.’

‘Oh, you knew about that?’

‘Sort of. He told me it’d help,’ Beau explains, and seems mindlessly to accept the hand Jester holds out for her as they make their way back inside. ‘I didn’t think he meant it’d knock me on my ass in two seconds flat but,’ she shrugs.

‘And everything…else?’ Jester winces, hearing the obvious sidestep in the question. Beau’s eyes cut sideways to her; somehow, they still hold nothing in them but sleepy fondness.

‘You mean with my dad.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s—‘ Beau shrugs. Tilts her head hard to the side in an effort to crack her neck, release a little of the tension that has built up so much in her shoulders, spine.

‘Here, let me,’ Jester offers. Pats Beau down onto the bedroll once more and sits behind her, knees pressing into the soft of Beau’s hips. It’s nice with how incredibly cut Beau is that she still has that padding on her hips, the soft layer. Jester knows it’s to protect those vital organs but she also knows that things can be more than one thing at a time. The softness can be protective and incredibly sweet all at once.

Jester moves closer, knees pressing dimples into it, thumbs brushing and then pressing into it as well. She is rewarded with a low grunt of pleasure as Beau realises what she intends, and the other girl lets her head fall forward on her neck, opening up her back for Jester to work. She rubs and massages until some of the knots at least feel looser, less incredibly tense, and finally, when she reaches the top of Beau’s back, she rubs her fingers soothingly over the jade tattoo where Beau has been pressing and rubbing and pinching the skin all day.

Beau hums, the sound vibrating into Jester’s knees and hands.

‘Better?’

‘Mm. Much.’

‘Good.’

Jester drags her hands down Beau’s back, rubbing gently now with none of the pressure of a massage. She leans forward to rest her forehead against Beau’s shoulder blade. Sighs.

‘Tired?’ Beau asks.

‘Yeah.’

Beau reaches back. Scritches blunt nails lightly on Jester’s scalp, around those itchy parts of her horns. ‘Go on, go back to sleep,’ she urges.

‘Are you?’ Beau is silent for a long moment. ‘Beau?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll sleep,’

‘Beau.’

‘I promise. I just—want to go over that weird ass prophecy thing again. God, he’s such a schmuck, having a fucking prophecy from a witch.’

Jester grunts unhappily. Wraps her arms around Beau from behind so she can’t reach out for her notebook. ‘In the morning, Beau.’

‘We’ll wanna head out straight away—‘

‘In the morning,’ she says again, no room for disobedience in her tone.

Beau tries anyway. ‘Just a minute—‘

‘I’m staying up for as long as you do,’ Jester tells her, changing tracks. Her accent thickens with a yawn. ‘I’m really sleepy, Beau,’ she wheedles. ‘I promise we can look at it in the morning—Cad will make us breakfast and Fjord won’t be really awake until the sun comes up, you know that. _Please_?’ She yawns a second time for good measure, doesn’t realise until she’s halfway through it that it’s real. She rubs her head sleepily over the sharp bone of Beau’s shoulder. Rests her forehead against it. 

The girl sighs for a long moment, all the breath pushing out of her lungs. ‘Fine. Fine.’ She can’t help but laugh when Jester nuzzles against her shoulder, giggles at Beau’s reluctant acquiescence. ‘You’re lucky you’re cute.’

She lets Jester bear her down to the ground just as they are, Jester still hugging her, and collapses with a little huff. Wriggles around until she’s comfortable, enough to make Jester release her. Beau turns on her side to face her, hand pillowed under her cheek.

‘Beau?’ Jester’s eyes trace her profile, illuminated by the faint glow of the dome.

‘Mm.’

‘Are you scared?’

Beau’s breath slows, the only sign that she had heard. Finally, she says, ‘A bit. Yeah.’ And when Jester’s cool fingers sneak under her blanket to find Beau’s, Beau holds her hand. And they sleep.


End file.
